“And then, in a skittering, chittering rush, it came. The hand, running high on its fingertips, scrabbled through the tall grass and up onto a tree stump. It stood there for a moment, like crab tasting the air, and then it made one triumphant, nail-clacking leap onto the center of the tablecloth.Time slowed for Coraline. The white fingers closed around the black key....”

“She sat down on one of her grandmother's uncomfortable armchairs, and the cat sprang up into her lap and made itself comfortable. The light that came through the picture window was daylight, real golden late-afternoon daylight, not a white mist light. The sky was a robin's-egg blue, and Coraline could see trees and, beyond the trees, green hills, which faded on the horizon into purples and grays. The sky had never seemed so sky, the world had never seemed so world ... Nothing, she thought, had ever been so interesting.”

“Now Coraline," said Miss Spink, "what's your name?""Coraline," said Coraline."And we don't know each other, do we?"Coraline looked at the thin young woman with black button eyes and shook her head slowly.”

“It sounded like a piece of blackboard being dragged over the nails of a wall of severed fingers.”

“On the first day Coraline's family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.”

“Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she met made any sense.”

“For tea she went down to see Misses Spink and Forcible. She had three digestive biscuits, a glass of limeade, and a cup of weak tea. The limeade was very interesting. It didn't taste anything like limes. It tasted bright green and vaguely chemical. Coraline liked it enormously. She wished they had it at home."How are your dear mother and father?" asked Miss Spink."Missing," said Coraline. "I haven't seen either of them since yesterday. I'm on my own. I think I've probably become a single child family.”